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As far as the six carrier go , I don't see it.

Nimitz, knowing the Japanese fleet dispositions, expected a draw.

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: vettim89

The problem with any Midway scenario is that the RL results were predicated on Yamamoto's plan being executed flawlessly. The prime facets of that plan that didn't go Yamamoto's way was that the USN was laying in wait for the IJN CVTF when they arrived off Midway. They were supposed to be at PH and only sortie either right before or immediately after the island fell into Japanese hands. Ergo, the first strikes from KB went to neutralizing Midway's AB. As players using a "Midway" scenario, we would know the except dispositions of both fleets. It would be highly unlikely that you could achieve even a draw for the USN under those conditions.

You can achieve Midway like results in AE but the will need to be set up in a similar situation: USN surprises the IJN by being some where they were not expected

Nimitz, knowing the Japanese fleet dispositions, expected a draw. Hughes's analysis is similar. Given enough replications we can see how balanced the game really is and identify the sources of imbalance.

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

As far as the six carrier go , I don't see it.

Six CVs are what would have been required to give the Japanese a fighting chance of a draw with respect to CV losses under those circumstances. If your consim doesn't generate lopsided US victories given the historical order of battle at Midway then your consim is broken.

Both navies knew at the time of the historical battle of Midway that if the enemy showed up with even light CV forces while you were engaged with suppressing a major land base then you were going to lose CVs. That's why the Japanese battle plan required the absence of the US CVs. That's why the US CVs during the early war strikes against Japanese positions on the edge of their perimeter were conducted in a context of operational intel placing Japanese CVs to far from the scene of the raids to respond.

The Japanese operational plan for Midway was, basically, to capture the island by surprise, and then do to the US CVs that which the US CVs historically did to them. Their plan was to use Midway in exactly the way that, in the historical battle, the US used Midway against the Japanese.

The problems were well-known to both navies. What was not known and has not been very well described until "Shattered Sword" came out was just how hopelessly flawed the Japanese operational plan turned out to be. It was the mother of all lousy operational plans.

What I wonder is if that was possible / feasible / realistic ?

ORIGINAL: m10bob

Just a comment...All the intel in the world and having our ships in the "right place" was nearly not good enough, when you look at the absolutely miserable, incompetant performance of the planes based ON Midway, and the completely incomplete PBY sighting reports.....

I truly believe only Divine intervention saved our bacon.

ORIGINAL: m10bob

Just a comment...All the intel in the world and having our ships in the "right place" was nearly not good enough, when you look at the absolutely miserable, incompetant performance of the planes based ON Midway, and the completely incomplete PBY sighting reports.....

I truly believe only Divine intervention saved our bacon.

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

100 slightly different variants on a USN lopsided victory, given the historical order of battle. The "1 float plane difference" myth was disproven by Robert Ballard almost a decade ago. As Shattered Sword and the paper I cited in this thread have shown, the Japanese recon plan was abysmal. That their plan succeeded at all was because the Japanese got "lucky" if you wish to use such a word and launched Tone #4 plane late. It was that plane that found Yorktown. Had it flown its planned recon pattern it would not have spotted Yorktown at all.


As to recalling strikes, neither side had that capability in June 1942. Japanese radio command and control was utterly appalling, and US command and control only slightly better. That showed it's hand in the operations of USS Hornet at Midway. Hornet's SBDs flew a strike against the predicted path of KB. Hornet's TBD squadron overheard updated contact reports from Midway island and altered course (leading to their substantial demise). Hornet's SBD and VF squadrons received no updated contact reports and found empty ocean.

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

BTW, few years ago we talked about this problem on WitP board IIRC.

In that discussion thread I suggested that Japanese, perhaps, had chance to use fast moving TF to suppress / kill Midway air base using ship artillery during night (Midway is, as we all know, pretty small and there is no room to hide - several hundred heavy HE shells would obliterate it for sure).

What I wonder is if that was possible / feasible / realistic ?

BTW, if it worked with Guadalcanal - perhaps it would work even better with Midway (i.e. nowhere to hide on small Midway)?

Possible maybe. The US was conducting intensive PBY recon from Midway three days prior to the battle and located the advance elements of the Japanese force. So I'd say as a working assumption that such an encounter would have the unsupported Japanese bombardment TF facing Midway's strike a.c. (but none from the USN CVs). It'd be -- interesting.

IIRC the Henderson Field on Guadalcanal also had recon but I think that they mostly (only?) caught retreating Japanese TFs with air strikes (and only if the Henderson Field was sufficiently operable and Japanese ships slowed down in retreat)...

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

Well, I guess it sounded like you're saying you can't really tell who'd have won the Battle of Midway based on the operational plans. If that's what you're saying, then we don't agree. Yeah, small things could have been different, but absent throwing the entire Japanese operational plan into the toilet and coming up with a completely different plan, the overwhelming central tendency would be (in any similar situation) for the USN to win. Not because it's the USN, but because the Japanese operational plan stunk.

Their recon plan stunk because their CVs did not do their own recon. ONE USN CV could mount more search a.c. as a matter of doctrine than the entire Japanese strike force at Midway, and the USN had three carriers and the PBYs and B-17s to draw upon for that purpose.

Changing the Japanese recon plan requires that you imagine that Japanese did not use CVs and CAs, together, at all the way that they trained to use them for decades. So you're entering the realm of, IMO, implausible fantasy. Kind of like "what if the USN torpedoes had all been extensively tested so that all air and sub torps were as reliable as the British or Japanese ones" assumption. It's an interesting "what if," but it's really outside the parameter of things like operational planning and general strategy. So, there's "scenarios" in which you get to change all of that. But from a historical pov they are, in my view, implausible.

So when you say "change 1 float plane's search result and you get different results" then we agree. But in my view the range of plausible variation, at Midway, on that date, with the forces and plans as intended, the overwhelming central tendency would be a crushing US victory. That the US won, there, comes as no surprise at all, to me.

Then I have another anecdotal observation. Apart from Midway, the USN and IJN had carrier clashes in three battles in 1942. In *none* of them did the Japanese walk away with a victory of any kind. They lost more A6Ms to F4Fs in head to head engagements between the two types. They failed in all of their strategic objectives. And the Japanese received crippling setbacks to their CV and pilot force in EACH of those engagements to force the substantial withdrawal of carrier support in contested theatres. In every instance the US was able to maintain a working carrier in the area, despite being outnumbered, deck-wise, in every battle.

I think Midway was no fluke. No quirk. No complex adaptive system highly sensitive to small perturbations etc. IMO it was the most likely outcome, BY FAR, given the forces deployed in that place and at that time. I can easily see the Japanese losing all 4 CVs and the US not losing a single one or even having one substantially damaged. A substantial victory where the IJN sinks three or even two USN CVs for each Japanese CV sunk strikes me as so implausible as to be not worth modeling.

ORIGINAL: herwin
Hie!

Let's see what the game actually does. Ney? [8D]